Walker, Sir John Ernest

Walker, Sir John Ernest,

1941–, English biochemist, Ph.D. Oxford, 1969. He has been a researcher at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge since 1974. In 1997 Walker was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Paul BoyerBoyer, Paul Delos,
1918–2018, American biochemist, b. Provo, Utah, Ph.D. Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison, 1943. Boyer taught at the Univ. of Minnesota, first in Saint Paul (1946–56) and then in Minneapolis (1956–63), and at the Univ.
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 and Jens SkouSkou, Jens Christian,
1918–2018, Danish chemist, M.D. Univ. of Copenhagen, 1944, Ph.D. Univ. of Aarhus, 1954. Skou was on the faculty at the Univ. of Aarhus, Denmark, from 1947 until he retired in 1988.
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. Boyer and Walker did pioneering work on the enzyme that participates in the formation of adenosine triphosphateadenosine triphosphate
(ATP) , organic compound composed of adenine, the sugar ribose, and three phosphate groups. ATP serves as the major energy source within the cell to drive a number of biological processes such as photosynthesis, muscle contraction, and the synthesis of
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 (ATP), a molecule that transports energy in cells. Walker determined the sequence of amino acids that make up the protein units of ATP and clarified the enzyme's three-dimensional structure. He was knighted in 1999.